Du Moyen Age Research Articles

Rhetoric and feminism in theCárcel de Amor1

In the debate between misogyny and feminism in fifteenth-century Spain, Diego de San Pedro's Carcel de Amor unequivocally and uncompromisingly comes to the defence of the female sex.2 The most obvi...

The Three Modes of Natural Law in Ockham: A Revision of the Text

THE THREE MODES OF NATURAL LAW IN OCKHAM: A REVISION OF THE TEXT The significance of the concept of natural law in Ockham's thinking can hardly be decided on a priori grounds.1 Only close attention to what he wrote can help towards an estimate. During the last forty years or so a central place in the lively if inconclusive debate about his views on this subject has been occupied by chapter six of book three of the second treatise of part three of his Dialogus. To it Max. A. Shepard drew attention in 1932 and Georges de Lagarde devoted almost a whole chapter of discussion in 19462. Father W. Kölmel's attempt in 1953 to rebut Lagarde's conclusions, though rightly insisting that IIusIIIae Dial. iii. 6 does not reveal the whole story, nevertheless concentrated most of its attention upon this text.3 When in the sixties Lagarde rehandled his Ockham volumes IIusIIIae Dial. iii. 6 still had a considerable part to play in his defence of his earlier views against Kölmel's criticisms.4 In his recent study of Ockham's political thought Professor McGrade engages in a lengthy tussle with this same passage; if only in passing, Professor 1 That seems to be the tendency, for example, of A. P. d'Entrèves, Natural Law (London, 1951), pp. 68-69, when he remarks on the Nominalist theory of ethics as an "insidious menace to the doctrine of natural law" and on Ockham as drawing out fully all the implications of "voluntarist ethics." 2 Max A. Shepard, "William of Occam and the Higher Law," American Political Science Review, 26 (1932), 1011-12; 27 (1933), 24, 32. Georges de Lagarde, La Naissance de l'Esprit Laïque au Déclin du Moyen-Age. Tom. VI. Ockham: La Morale et le droit (Paris, 1946), chapter 6, pp. 140-63. 8 W. Kölmel, 'Das Naturrecht bei Wilhelm Ockham,' Franziskanische Studien, 35 (1953), 39-85. For the reservations, cf. pp. 56, 76; for the discussion, PP- 55-76. 4 Cf. especially La Naissance de l'Esprit Laïque. Tom. V. Guillaume d'Ockham : Critique des structures ecclésiales (Paris/Louvain, 1963), pp. 1 12-19, 271, 286. 2?8H. S. OFFLER Gordon Leff has not failed to notice it.5 Of course, none of these scholars confined his attention to IIusIIIae Dial. iii. 6 or built his argument upon it exclusively: the early chapters of book i of the same treatise contain an important alternative definition of natural law, as Lagarde perceived, and the value of Ockham's Opus Nonaginta Dierum for the investigation of this problem has been indicated by Dr. J. B. Morrall and Professor Miethke, recently followed by Leff.6 Yet IIusIIIae Dial. iii. 6 remains, as Professor Francis Oakley has said, Ockham's "best known text on natural law."7 Modern scholarship has in fact endorsed the high opinion of this passage expressed by medieval annotators: "pulchra definitio iuris naturalis," or, as Pierre d'Ailly characterized it, "novam distinctionem de iure naturali valde bonam."8 In view of the strategic importance so generally attributed to this text we are left asking why modern interpretations of it have been so notably diverse. At least part of the answer lies in the deficiencies of the version which the commentators have used. Ultimately only one version is at issue. Shepard, Lagarde, Kölmel and Oakley rely on Goldast's edition of the Dialogus in vol. ii of his Monarchia Sancti Romani Imperii (1614; in vol. iii of later editions of the same work); McGrade and Leff have gone back to the Lyons edition of 1494 (reproduced in 1962). But Goldast offered no more than a reprint of the Lyons edition, which has thus provided all these scholars with the basis for their varied conclusions. Though both Lagarde and McGrade have also consulted manuscripts, neither seems to have pursued this line systematically or very far; Lagarde indeed, possibly not without irony, appears at one point to make rather light of textual problems.9 The result has been that the difficulties of inter8 A. S. McGrade, The Political Thought of William of Ockham (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 177-85; Gorden...

Reviews and Short Notes

Reviews and Short Notes

The Saint in Medieval Literature

In a notable collection of medieval studies,l the late Albert Pauphilet devoted his first chapter to 'Le Mythe du Moyen Age'. He was there concerned primarily with the diversely coloured pictures which, over the last 400 years, succeeding generations of scholars, artists, and writers have presented of that falsely designated 'period', the very name of which implies the notion of a uniform interregnum extending over a millennium of Gothic twilight which elapsed between the end of Classical Antiquity and the so-called Renaissance century. Before we smile tolerantly at the errors of our predecessors we should perhaps remember that, although in recent years we in the Modern Humanities have begun to share the concern of our colleagues in the historical sciences for the flux rather than for the so-called 'periods' of history, we still tend in our literary studies, if only subconsciously, to perpetuate an erroneous concept by our retention of the traditional terminology; that, as specialists in the various vernacular literatures, we tend to distort even further the fallacious term, on the one hand by narrowing it so that, in French studies for example, we concentrate on the period I150-I300 to the virtual exclusion of the germinal post-Carolingian period and of the discordant fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and, on the other hand, by applying it to cultures which scarcely knew the Classical Antiquity on which the term itself necessarily depends. More seriously perhaps, in the expanded world of the twentieth century, we are still profoundly conditioned in our humanistic vision by the intellectual outlook of the Middle Ages which saw in Christian Europe, and in Christian Western Europe in particular, the centre of the civilized world beyond which lay only the untutored lesser breeds without the moral law. It is paradoxical, too, that, while we look back to the Hellenic and Latin sources of our Western culture, in our medieval studies we still continue in large measure to follow our medieval ancestors by ignoring or disdaining Byzantium.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Shapiro, Alan, Edward Ouchi and Evelyn Foote. Structural Linguistics, An Introduction for Teachers and Administrators. New York: Metropolitan School Study Council, 1961.Finocchiaro, Mary. English as a Second Language: From Theory to Practice. New York: Regents Publishing Company, 1964.Ornstein, Jacob, and William Gage. The ABC's of Language and Linguistics. Philadelphia: Chilton Company, 1964.Fries, Charles C. Linguistics: The Study of Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1964.Martinet, André. Elements of General Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.Hall, Robert A., Jr., Introducing Linguistics. Philadelphia: Chilton Company, 1964.DeVane, William Clyde.*Higher Education in Twentieth‐Century America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1965.Carroll, John B. Language and Thought. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1964.Turgeon, Frederick King, Cinq Comédies (Du Moyen Age à Nos Jours). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1964.Cruz Costa, João. A History of Ideas in Brazil: The Development of Philosophy in Brazil and the Evolution of National History. Translated from the Portuguese by Suzette Macedo. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964.Herriott, J. Homer. Towards a Critical Edition of the Celestina. A Filiation of Early Editions. Madison‐Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.Brecht, Bertoldt. Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder. Edited by Volkmar Sander. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.Vogler, Frederick Wright. Vital d'Audiguier and the early seventeenth‐century French novel. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1964.Adams, Nicholson B. and Herschel J. Frey. Spanish for Today. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc., 1964.Guthrie, Ramon, and George E. Diller. (editors). Prose and Poetry of Modern France. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964.Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. A Bilingual Edition, translated and edited by Mark Musa. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964.Woolf, Leonard. Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911 to 1918. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964.Bottke, Karl G. Brief Oral French Review. Third edition. New York: Appleton‐Century‐Crofts, Inc., 1964.Harris, Julian and André Lévêque. Basic French Reader. Revised edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1964.Di Cesare, Mario A. Vida's “Christiad” and Vergilian Epic. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1964.Weiss, Auréliu. Le Théâtre de Luigi Pirandello dans le mouvement dramatique contemporain: Essai. Paris: Librairie 73, 1964.Lenneberg, Eric H., (editor). New Directions in the Study of Language. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1964.Bernal, Ignacio. Mexico Before Cortez: Art, History, Legend. Translated by Willis Barnstone. Dolphin Books. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1963.Westheim, Paul. The Sculpture of Ancient Mexico. Translated from Spanish into English by Ursula Bernard. Translated into Spanish from the original German by Mariana Frenk. Anchor Books. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1963.Lenz, Siegfried. Jäger des Spotts und andere Erzählungen. Edited by Robert H. Spaethling. New York: W. W. Norton & Co, Inc, 1965.Burke, Kenneth. Perspectives by Incongruity and Terms for Order. Edited by Stanley Edgar Hyman, with the assistance of Barbara Karmiller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964.Scott, Nathan A., Jr., (editor). The New Orpheus: Essays Toward a Christian Poetic. New York: Sheed and Ward, Inc., 1964.Wellek, René. Confrontations: Studies in the Intellectual and Literary Relations between Germany, England, and the United States during the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1965.Arce de Vázquez, Margot. Gabriela Mistral: The Poet and Her Work. Translated by Helene Masslo Anderson. New York: New York University Press, 1964.Irvin, Leon P. and Donald L. King. Vingt et un contes. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.Kritzeck, James (editor). Anthology of Islamic Literature from the Rise of Islam to the Modern Times. New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston Inc., 1964.

The development of large-scale farming in Denmark, 1525–1744

Abstract This thesis is a study of central importance of one of the principal questions in Danish economic and social history between the end of the Middle Ages and the great agrarian reforms towards the end of the 18th century. In this period the leading agricultural exports, grain and oxen, were largely associated with large-scale farming. The book is also of general European interest in view of the great extent to which the very diverse economic and social structures of different countries were determined during this period by differences in the incidence of large-scale farming. With its own particular mixture of large-scale farming and ordinary peasant farming, Denmark holds an interesting intermediate position; it would have been desirable for this survey to have been included in the reports to the Etude comparée du grand domaine depuis la fin du Moyen Age, which was one of the subjects of discussion at the First International Conference of Economic History held in Stockholm in August 1960.

A Handbook of Middle English.

Professor Fernand Mosse of the College de France is at home in all the Germanic languages and literatures, but for many years he has paid particular attention to English. Since he is a medievalist he has interested himself first and foremost in the earlier periods, and since he is a teacher as well as investigator he has been long concerned to smooth the path of students taking their first steps into a field far from our day and time. A few years ago, this concern of his ripened into a work that won general recognition as soon as it came out: his Manuel de l'Anglais du Moyen Age des Origines an XIVe Siecle. In the Manuel the author's mastery of the material and talent for clear and orderly presentation are happily combined. In this work we have by far the best introduction to medieval English now available.-from the Foreword

The Literary Background of the Chantefable

T HE new edition of Aucassin et Nicolette by Mario Roques I once more offers occasion for the discussion of its peculiar literary form, that of alternate prose and verse. In his Introduction, Roques briefly discusses cette forme originale et unique dans la litterature du moyen age, 2 and after rejecting the various definitions of Aucassin as a roman, a conte, a nouvelle, a fabliau, and a recit, he arrives at the conclusion that it is a mime. 3 If a technical name must be found for the type of literature which Aucassin represents, why not call it, as did its author, a cantefable? If it is felt that this term needs explanation, we can find none better than that of Gaston Paris, who has definitely explained the chantefable as ce melange de prose et de vers, de morceaux oiu l'on chante, et de morceaux ou l'on dit et conte etfable. 4 So far as we know, Aucassin et Nicolette is the only specimen of French literature in the Middle Ages which is composed of verse and music and prose, and thus it is rightly called unique. But if we view the chantefable as being in its elementary form simply a literary style in which prose and verse operate together as a unit in narrative function, and if we disregard the special characteristic of musical notation on the manuscript of Aucassin, then we shall be able to match it with other pieces of literature written in this style in both earlier and later times. Examples of prose-and-verse in which the verse is purely adventitious and does not form an integral part of the narrative vehicle have not been included among the following quotations. That Aucassin represents a type of literature which in France was eventually attracted to the theatre, is a matter we shall not discuss. Our interest in the document lies not so much in its

Mélanges d'Archéologie et d'Histoire. Archéologie du Moyen Age. By Jules Quicherat and Robert de Lasteyrie.

Previous articleNext article FreeReviews and Notices of BooksMélanges d'Archéologie et d'Histoire. Archéologie du Moyen Age. By Jules Quicherat and Robert de Lasteyrie.A. L. Frothingham Jr.A. L. Frothingham Jr. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 2, Number 2April–June 1886 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/495849 Views: 1Total views on this site Journal History This article was published in The American Journal of Archaeology and of the History of the Fine Arts (1885-1896), which is continued by American Journal of Archaeology (1897-present). Copyright © 1886 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.